When “MasterChef” returns for its fifth season Monday night, four New Yorkers will be among the 30 home cooks vying for the praise of judges Gordon Ramsay, Joe Bastianich and (a slimmed-down) Graham Elliot.

Elizabeth Stephens, an advertising executive from Brooklyn; Francis Legge, a music video director from Manhattan; Jamiee Vitolo, a bakery assistant from Queens; and Christine Silverstein, an investment director from Yonkers, will all appear in the premiere (8 p.m. on Fox), where the chefs are tasked with cooking a signature dish that reflects who they are.

Legge brings a new aspect to the competition because he specializes in molecular gastronomy — a food discipline that focuses on the physical and chemical transformation of ingredients.

“Doing music videos, I’m very technology-inspired so I’m always doing the newest technological advances in every field, even cooking,” the Scottish-born Legge tells The Post.

For the first challenge, Legge made a “crazy caprese salad,” in which he took each ingredient of the Italian classic and turned it into a different texture (tomato noodles and mozzarella spears).

Stephens started cooking 10 years ago, after she graduated college and had to prepare her own meals. For her signature dish, she made a PB&J-inspired dessert of peanut butter bread pudding with berry compote.

“I have a little bit of a Southern influence because I grew up in the South,” she says. “I like to take comforting things and elevate them.”

Though she hosts dinner parties almost every weekend at the Williamsburg apartment she shares with her husband, nothing could prepare her for the challenge of cooking a meal for 500 servicemen and -women at an Army base, featured later this season.

“For a home cook, you can’t even fathom how much food it would take to feed 500 people,” Stephens says. “It was this line of hungry people that seemed like it would never end. And of course you really want to bring something delicious for the people who have fought for our country.”

Other challenges this season see the chefs create a three-course meal for a summer wedding, prepare American classics at a local diner, cook a romantic dinner for 14 couples, serve game-day food for football fans and take over a fine-dining restaurant in Hollywood.

And with a cookbook deal and $250,000 on the line, the contestants found the challenges aren’t just in the cooking.

“There definitely are a lot of type A personalities this season,” Legge says. “Everyone … is very aware of the prize and they all have their eye on the ball. It gets very heated in the kitchen sometimes and not just in the pan.”